First SAP NetWeaver COE in India

BANGALORE — July 4, 2005 - SAP AG SAP Labs India, SAP's largest

development facility outside Germany, announced the inauguration of the first

SAP NetWeaver Center of Excellence (COE). The facility will be run by SAP Custom

Development and will be located at the SAP Labs campus in Bangalore.

The purpose of the COE will be to facilitate the process of educating SAP

partners in India and Asia Pacific on the SAP NetWeaver platform in order to

enable a faster adoption of Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA).

The COE will provide support on a project basis to assist SAP partners in

developing prototype and pilot solutions for unique customer requirements, and

migrating legacy systems onto the SAP NetWeaver platform. This will be done by

leveraging global expertise in implementing SAP NetWeaver within a controlled

environment.

SAP partners will be supported by a global team of experts on SAP NetWeaver

technology. The COE will offer advanced workshops on various SAP NetWeaver

topics in order to give partners the opportunity to gain hands-on exposure to

this platform and will include case studies to ensure that partners are exposed

to newly-developed solutions that are relevant to real-life implementation

situations.

The SAP NetWeaver COE is an initiative started by SAP Custom Development —

an SAP line of business dedicated to helping customers drive more value out of

their SAP investment by developing unique and innovative business processes on

the SAP business process platform.

The COE was inaugurated by Harald Stuckert, Senior Vice President &

General Manager, SAP Custom Development, at a function attended by several key

SAP India partners. Speaking at the launch, Mr. Stuckert said, "The SAP

NetWeaver Center of Excellence reinforces SAP's commitment to its partners and

will enable them to grow their business by expanding their development offerings

to better address our customers' needs."

The COE will be headed by Rajesh Agarwala, Director, SAP NetWeaver COE. Mr.

Agarwala is a nine-year veteran with SAP. Describing the COE's objective, Mr.

Agarwala said, "At SAP, we understand how important it is to deliver and

support integrated end-to-end solutions that provide unparalleled value to our

customers. The COE is a key initiative to ensure successful solution

deployment."

The COE facility consists of state-of-the-art infrastructure, which is

equipped with the latest 24X7 landscape servers and systems, conference rooms

and project rooms for partners to interact with global development experts.

SAP NetWeaver is an open integration and application platform that supports

business change, growth and innovation while reducing IT costs and complexities.

It is a technical enabler of ESA, which is a blueprint for implementing

enterprise-scale business solutions and flexible IT infrastructures by

leveraging Web services and other open standards.

The COE in Bangalore marks another significant initiative in SAP's efforts

to meet growing customer demands for expertise in SAP NetWeaver technology. In

2003, SAP established the SAP Developer Network (SDN) to facilitate the transfer

of knowledge and information between developers inside and outside SAP by

providing technical articles, Web training, code samples, evaluation tools,

special interest groups and developer-specific events, in addition to detailed

technical reference materials.